I sat in my car.
I didn't start it.
The parking lot was ordinary. A woman was loading grocery bags into an SUV. A teenager was on his phone by the entrance. A cart was gently rolled by the wind — a cart someone had left at an angle in an empty space, moving in no particular direction.
I felt a little like the cart.
I put my hands on the steering wheel.
You're pregnant.
I tried it out. Just in my head. The sentence.
You are pregnant with Judah Beaumont's child.
The teenager went inside. The cart rolled another inch and stopped.
I thought about my father's house. Of a silent Sunday afternoon and rooms built around scripture — however twisted it may’ve been. This hadn’t been the plan. My father’s voice rang in my head, and kept ringing.
Whore. Child out of wedlock! A whore!
I pressed my lips together so hard they turned white.
“Mercy… What have you done?”
The drive back to St. Francisville took thirty-four minutes. I watched the clock almost the entire way and somehow still saw two red lines on the face of it.
I had thirty-four minutes to decide what to do. Clearly that was not enough time. My hands were shaking, my eyes werered for having cried for twenty solid minutes in the Walgreen’s bathroom and I couldn’t get my father toshut the fuck up.
I so desperately needed him to shut up.
By the time I pulled onto the gravel drive I had it — or so I thought — figured out. I wouldn’t tell him anything. For now. Because I needed to figure out something better than that, and that needed time.
So I pinched my pale cheeks, bringing some color back into them, blew my nose in a napkin I found in my bag and prayed my eyes wouldn’t show red in the accusatory light of the estate.
He was in the study when I came in. Door open.
“How was the drive?” he called.
“Fine. Traffic on the bridge.”
“There's always traffic on the bridge,” he muttered.
I put my bag down in the hallway.
“I picked up that coffee you like,” I called back. “The Guatemalan.”
A pause.
“Thank you,” he said.
I went to the kitchen and put the coffee away and stood at the counter for a moment with my palms flat on the surface and my eyes closed.
Okay.
Maybe it’s all going to be all right.
Then I started dinner.
